John Donne
A Valediction Forbbiding Morning
As virtuous men pass mildly away, | ||
And whisper to their souls, to go, | ||
Whilst some of their sad friends do say, | ||
The breath goes now and some say, No. | ||
5 | So let us melt, and make no noise, | |
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; | ||
Twere profanation of our joys | ||
To tell the laity our love. | ||
Moving of th earth brings harms and fears, | ||
10 | Men reckon what it did, and meant; | |
But trepidation of the spheres, | ||
Though greater far, is innocent. | ||
Dull sublunary lovers love | ||
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit | ||
15 | Absence, because it doth remove | |
Those things which elemented it. | ||
But we by a love so much refined, | ||
That ourselves know not what it is, | ||
Inter-assured of the mind, | ||
20 | Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss. | |
Our two souls, therefore, which are one, | ||
Though I must go, endure not yet | ||
A breach, but an expansion, | ||
Like gold to airy thinness beat. | ||
25 | If they be two, they are two so | |
As stiff twin compasses are two; | ||
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show | ||
To move, but doth, if th other do. | ||
And though it in the centre sit, | ||
30 | Yet when the other far doth roam, | |
It leans, and hearkens after it, | ||
And grows erect, as that comes home. | ||
Such wilt thou be to me, who must | ||
Like th other foot, obliquely run; | ||
35 | Thy firmness makes my circle just, | |
And makes me end, where I begun. | ||
Robert Clark